Ruslan Krivobok

21:5708/12/2009

A chemistry student from the northern Ukrainian city of Konotop was killed when a stick of chewing gum exploded in his mouth, Ukrainian media reported on Tuesday.

The 25-year-old student of Ukraine's Kiev Polytechnic Institute was working at a computer in his parents' house late on Saturday when the incident occurred.

"A loud pop was heard from the student's room," the ukranews.com portal said, citing an aide to the city's police chief. "When his relatives entered the room they saw that the lower part of the young man's face had been blown off."

A forensic examination established that the chewing gum was covered with an unidentified chemical substance, thought to be some type of explosive material.

Police questioning revealed that the student had a bizarre habit of chewing gum after dunking it into citric acid. On his table, police found both citric acid packets and a similar-looking unidentified substance, believed to be some kind of explosive material.

Investigators believe that the student simply confused the packets, and put the gum, covered with explosive material, into his mouth.

Although the local forensic department does not have the necessary equipment to identify the substance, it refused to send it to the capital, Kiev, over fears that it might explode during transportation. Forensic experts from Kiev are expected in Konotop on Wednesday.

Investigators are to decide within a 10-day period whether a criminal case should be launched.

MOSCOW, December 8 (RIA Novosti) 

Kseniya Simonova, the winner of TV show contest 'Ukraine's Got Talent', creates a drawing in sand in Yevpatoria, Sept 24, 2009. Photograph: Stringer/Russia/Reuters

The appearance of a shy 24-year-old on a Ukrainian TV talent show this year has caused a nation to revisit its painful wartime past and is well on the way to becoming an international sensation.

About 13 million people watched Kseniya Simonova win Ukraine's Got Talent live with an extraordinary demonstration of "sand art". Most of them, according to reports, were weeping. The judges and studio audience sobbed throughout. Ukraine, where a fraught presidential election campaign is under way ahead of a vote in January 2010, is enduring a deepening financial crisis and the raw, sentimental depiction of Ukraine's suffering, even drawn in sand, was too much.

Ever since May, when Simonova first stepped on stage with a light-box full of sand and drew pictures in it, deftly creating tableaux of the country's history, her performances have collected new viewers. Her winning appearance has now notched up more than four million hits on YouTube. The number of hits is extraordinary for a foreign web clip, especially given that few people watching it could understand its message.

Ukraine lost one in four of its population during the Second World War, the largest losses of any country and about 20% of the total deaths.

Simonova's sand story portrays the human loss after the German invasion in 1941. The opening scene shows a couple sitting on a bench under a starry sky. Warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated to be replaced by crying faces. Then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again, but war and chaos return and a young woman becomes an old widow, before the image turns into an obelisk – the Ukrainian monument to its Unknown Soldier.

Simonova has returned to ordinary life in the Crimean seaside town of Evpatoria, where she has used her £80,000 prize to buy a modest house and set up a children's charity.

Simonova has told interviewers she is happy to stay in Evpatoria and will not be travelling abroad to cash in on her growing global fan base. Her success has taken the young woman by surprise. "I only entered because there was a child I know who needed an operation and I wanted to help," she said. "I did not mean to make the whole country cry."